Greg Ballard, President & Chief Executive Officer
Over his distinguished career in the gaming, entertainment and multimedia industries, Greg Ballard has served as CEO at SONICblue, makers of ReplayTV and Rio digital music players; MyFamily.com, a successful subscription-based Internet service; and 3Dfx where, over a three-year period, he grew the company from $4 million to an annualized rate of more than $400 million. He previously served as CEO and COO for Warner Custom Music, a division of Time Warner, Inc. Ballard was also president of Capcom Software, the U.S. subsidiary known for hits such as Street Fighter, Mega-Man and Resident Evil, as well as COO and CFO of Digital Pictures, a leading video game developer for Sega CD. In recent years Ballard has served on the board of directors for xFire, an online gaming platform and community purchased by Viacom in April 2006, and on the public boards of THQ (NASDAQ: THQI), Pinnacle Systems and IGN. He holds a B.A. from the University of Redlands and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

As a seasoned Silicon Valley CEO, Greg states that one of the most important aspects of business is customer service. While this is often the most neglected, and the first to be cut when money is sparse, Greg suggests that saving money on providing great customer service is not a smart move.

An important lesson that Greg learned during his extensive career was to treat everyone with respect. He states that the business world is in fact a small world, and one is likely to interact with the same people many times. It is very important to be respectful of those senior and junior to you.

Greg states that the most corrosive thing that can happen in a company is to have a debate continue after the decision has been made. He suggests that people who are supportive of decisions which they were against are very valuable to an organization.

Greg recounts scenarios where he could have made a little more money by abandoning his value system; however, he is happier for having stuck to his values. He suggests that the best way to make such decisions is to think about what the right thing to do is, and then do it.

Greg draws on his experiences at 3Dfx and GluMobile and states that being first to market is not necessarily an advantage. He suggests that it is often better to be second and thus learn from the mistakes of the previous entrants.

Greg suggests that there are many ways that creativity can manifest itself in business: from business strategy to product design to a clever marketing campaign. He states that a successful business requires creativity in all aspects of its operations.